Best J.G. Ballard Novel

I'm probably a freak for saying this but
1 they all feel the same to me.
2 that said, I never got into Crash.

I mean, I like Ballard, don't get me wrong, but I'm notthat big of a fan.

Is anything post-Empire worth reading?

Crash is not that great. Neither is the Atrocity Exhibition. Everything else pre-1981 is pretty great, esp. Concrete Island, High Rise and the Crystal World.

I can't remember having read Running Wild, but I know I have so it must have been boring.
Cocaine Nights and Super Cannes were pretty good.

i once read somewhere someone saying that J.G. Ballard was a great writer who had never written a great book. I think I agree with that.

I have read hardly any of these: Empire of the Sun we had to read for high school, I was the only one in the class who enjoyed it; read Crash one afternoon, in my university library, and then on the bus on the way home, really liked it and will vote for it, though I'm hardly qualified to vote in this; and I read The Atrocity Exhibition a week or two later.

I think my favourite piece of writing by Ballard is the short story "Manhole 69".

I wanted to include some of the short story collections, but it's hard to figure what was released when.

"i once read somewhere someone saying that J.G. Ballard was a great writer who had never written a great book."

This is patently untrue.

I somehow feel he should have stuck with one book. Don't know which one though. Maybe Crash (even though I didn't like it at the time)?

I like a lot of his stuff but yeah his novels all kind of seem the same to me. He seems obsessed with writing about groups of people flocking around deranged messianic figures with a post-apocalyptic backdrop. Crash was pretty nuts when I first read it but it honestly doesn't seem any better than some of his other more sci-fi material, which I honestly prefer more (more interested in singing plants and Charlie Manson impersonators than I am in car crashes I guess) - the one that is clearest in my memory is Hello America, so maybe that gets my vote.

I think my favourite piece of writing by Ballard is the short story "Manhole 69".

^^^ If I ever find myself awake and eating food sometime in the early morning I think of it as "midfood". I think his short stories are actually better than his novels. My favourites are "Escapement" and "Now Zero" (for the so-obvious-but-you-don't-see-it ending that just creeps up on you)

I would rep for his sequence of novels from Cocaine Nights onwards, although Super Cannes repeats Cocaine Nights, and Kingdom Come repeats Millenium People. I'm still voting High Rise though.

FWIW I think the best book of his I've read is his memoir, Miracles Of Life.

I read Rushing To Paradise, pretty much hated it and have never picked up anything since. I'll pick up Cocaine Nights if I see it cheap.

I definitely like his short stories more than his novels. None of these are really jumping out at me as best.

early books are some of the best in the science fiction genre, fearlessly intelligent and challenging. I haven't read them all yet, but 'Crystal World' will make you feel awake and alive

for experimental writing, Atrocity Exhibition / Crash are the peak, and those books changed my expectations for what writing can do. I voted Atrocity Exhibition because it's stuck with me the longest, the idea of paring out all extraneous character development & connecting narrative tissue so you are just left with sidelong glances of the 'story'... and yet it still makes perfect sense. Every paragraph is a chapter, every chapter is its own novel, once you unpack it that book captures modern perception better than any insufferably watered down Delillo retreads.

& Crash isn't for everyone, but it's very powerful. It's not seductive, it's a warning, a roadmap of the impact that sexualized advertising is chasing our animal impulses away from our conscious understanding, into some very remote, intellectualized & inhuman places. that choice Ballard quote, "The century's most terrifying casualty is the death of affect." the chapter that ends with the most abstracted, mechanized description of sex possible, where you only know that a sexual act is being described through context, and then the next chapter begins with the sentence 'the world was flowering into wounds'.

The next few books drag those themes back into more traditional forms. 'High Rise' is probably the must read. And technically it's probably his best book. Clearest writing, tightest structure, most lasting relevance. Amazing this hasn't been made into a movie (though Cronenberg's 'Shivers' does a mutant horror-genre sideglance on it).

Empire of the Sun is incredible, but mainly after you read the others, because it's so personal. Only novelist who's ever going to have his books made into films by both Cronenberg & Spielberg.

Running Wild is good, haven't read anything past The Kindness of Women, which I admit threw me. Even though it's somewhat autobiographical, it's one of those bizarre British sex fantasy books like Colin Wilson's 'The God in the Labyrinth', hyper intellectual. I liked it, but it was pretty devious selling it as the sequel to 'Empire of the Sun', it's closer to 'Crash' than anything else.

I agree the short stories are probably better than many of the novels. I wouldn't know which one of those to vote for, there are too many astounding ones.

Concrete Island would make a great movie as well.

The weird thing about the all Ballard's novels are the same is that it's really only true in clusters. The first four are somewhat alike (environmental disaster novels.) And then the next four (look at what technology has brought us to novels.) And then the next ones are the messiah novels. And then I guess the last four it sounds like they are of a piece.

xpost it's the short stories that would make the best movies. it baffles me they haven't been mined. every single one is so filmable. but maybe better they haven't, the 70's was the time when they were making films with themes that dark, and it'd be easy to miss the point. the two movies that have been made certainly did.

that's certainly true. they share themes, but there's been a lot of evolution. I'm curious about the last four.

I'm currently reading Cocaine Nights and... I don't really get it. Interesting stuff happens but Ballard quite obviously doesn't care, he's too busy talking about tennis machines and shit. I also read The Drowned World ages ago and feel the same, I can remember the imagery but fuck knows what actually happened. Empire Of The Sun wins just because it's the only one I actually enjoyed and felt satisfied reading.

Empire of the Sun is incredible, but mainly after you read the others, because it's so personal.

OTM. after Empire I'd go for High Rise or Crash. Only later novel I've read is Super-cannes which I liked.

Going for 'The Drowned World', which had a really hallucinogenic kick, plus was just plain cool. His last few are just retreads of each other, though. Has to have one of the most recognisable "styles" around: emotional coldness, empty swimming pools, technological wreckage, nasty sex, expensive business suits, tropical vegetation...

high rise is so so so dope. really, such a fantastic book, everyone should read it. i vote that. also one of the best opening lines ever!

“Later, as he sat on the balcony eating the dog, Dr Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months”.

Voted for The Unlimited Dream Company - straight-up surrealistic messiah, or not. I need to read it again.

I think my fave Ballard is the interview with him in one of the old Re/Search Magazines.

voted for the crystal world because i had the strongest most vivid dream-image from even reading the title: i haven't read it since i was about fourteen, but of all the hallucinogenic-environmental-disaster novels it's the one that stayed with me the most.

It sure as hell isn't Kingdom Come ... How could you fuck up a novel about a nationalistic consumer cult occupying a giant shopping mall? Well, it was boring.

high rise is so so so dope. really, such a fantastic book, everyone should read it. i vote that. also one of the best opening lines ever!

― s1ocki, Monday, March 9, 2009 10:56 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

Despite our long-running disagreement over the quality of food in Montreal, I think s1ocki may have tastebuds after all!

Great book, great opening line.

im interested to see how this goes - ballards one of those writers thats just completely off my radar, the only place ive seen or heard him discussed was in a collection of martin amis's criticism. it was amis's backhanded take that got me to read high rise which i adored and is still probably the best ballard

i havent read anything post-empire or any of the short stories tho

Are you from the Falklands?

is that a zing???

also no

I'm just having a hard time imagining an individual who would willingly submit him or herself to a volume of Martin Amis' criticism (a fate worse than his fiction, surely) without ever having really heard of Ballard. It's kind of like choosing to be a heroin addict at age 13 without first investigating whether there might be other, less debilitating drugs to be addicted to.

weird poll. hard to answer. i guess i prefer the short stories. concrete island and the drowned world seem like the most successful novels to me, in terms of what i think novels are "supposed to do". especially concrete island - i like the simplicity and clarity. voted for crash cuz it's so unique and so useful - had a profound impact on me once upon a time. atrocity exhibition, too, but that's more a series of related experiments than a single work, thus more diffuse. empire of the sun doesn't get enough respect from jgb fans. too mainstream, i suppose. good book though. something about ballard reminds me of conrad, moreso in that book than in any other. agree that the recent stuff is dull, though "stylish" (and probably dull because of that).

what is it about Amis and the New Worlds guys? They seem to hate each other (Moorcock has an axe to grind against Amis as well)

Guys once this poll is finished I will do a Ballard short stories poll, kay.

atrocity exhibition is the only one i've read (years ago), but i thought it was a collection of short stories

The stories are (sort of) connected so most people call it a novel.

It's his Go Down Moses, j/k.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Of the later ones, I've read "Running Wild", thought it was a bit half assed. Also, "Rushing to Paradise", "Super Cannes" and "Cocaine Nights" all of which I enjoyed quite a lot. But not as much as "High Rise". In fact I can't think of many books by anyone that I enjoyed as much as "High Rise", so I voted for that.

voted Concrete Island - I think about it often, esp. when highway driving

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

rip

you were beat

Recommend me some J.G. Ballard - S/D, I guess.

Good interview with David Pelham, who illustrated the covers of a lot of Ballard's work in the seventies.

Love his Ballard covers, but the prices of the framed prints on the linked site are insane.

£275 doesn't seem that nutty to me

I took the Barbican Architecture Tour yesterday and the whole way through all I could think of was High Rise.

I registered after this poll, and largely agree with the results. My favorite was probably The Day of Creation for knitting together a Heart of Darkness river journey into an African civil war with an unrequited Lolita infatuation, but in general, the late 70s urban overcrowding rats in a cage novels are the most successful. The Crystal World was the best of the 60s era environmental disasters.

Now that the Complete Short Stories are in print and inexpensive, most casual readers needn't bother with the novels.

If I was a graphic designer for Ballard reprints, my go-to artist would be the collage photographer Suzanne Moxhay. Her artwork (featured on Gazelle Twin's rather Ballardian 2011 album) captures Ballard's prose style as well as anything since the Re/Print Phoebe Glockner anatomical drawings and airport photography.

http://www.suzannemoxhay.com/Images/Feralis/Athne.jpg
Would make/build wallspace for a big print.

Think I would vote for The Kindness of Women if this were run again. It's such a curious and potent mixture of autobiography & trad. Ballard, compassion & scientific disinterest. Really, really like it.

uh i'm not sure a ballard novel isn't in progress irl at the moment

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/26/naked-man-eating-victims-face-killed-miami_n_1548359.html

"oh dear, the guy who made "splice" is now attached to both "neuromancer" and "high rise" adaptations"

I liked Splice (and the Cube).

Never really got into him but just read the memoir and am now reading some short stories, thanks to this thread, in an old best of with an intro by Anthony Burgess. Thought about getting a ebook of the the Complete Short Stories but

Publication Date: February 29, 2016

Good interview with David Pelham, who illustrated the covers of a lot of Ballard's work in the seventies.

― Ned Raggett, Sunday, February 26, 2012 10:12 AM (3 months ago)

didn't know there was a biography until i read the above link, so ty (tho' the reviews for the biog are p poor, and the author, john baxter, is def a bit of a one-man biog factory - i've scanned his rather ho-hum bks on lucas, kubrick, spielberg (hence the ballard connection, i guess.))

I went on a mini Ballard binge last year, read Millenium People, Kingdom Come, Cocaine Nights. MP felt like he tried to "humanize' characters a bit.

Re-read High Rise which I think is his masterpiece and now has a cruel resonance for anybody living in a NYC co-op building...

also re-read The Crystal World which has a Graham Greene vibe between the African setting and the guilt-ridden doctor character

Now i have library copy of the Complete Short Stories which I will have to return in a few weeks and have no idea in what order to read them? Chronologically? Thematically or econstructing some of the old collections, so The Voices of Time, The Terminal Beach, Vermillion Sands and then Memories of the Space Age?

OK, that publication date was almost four years off. I can now buy myself an ecopy and buy myself some time to read the thing

Just start at the beginning and go through

^seconded - the gradual development of his style (obsessions) is engrossing and a wonder to behold

somewhat reminiscent of 'high rise': http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/01/28/130128fa_fact_anderson

some great stuff up on ubu recently:

http://www.ubu.com/film/ballard.html

I love Ubuweb.

Has anyone else read "The Burning World"? Thought it was interesting that the oceans effectively becoming covered with something preventing evaporation of water and the rain cycle, and then I thought about all of the plastic shit we've got floating out there breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces...

Also the image of the people chasing waves inland to distill the water is kind of extraordinary.

^^^

Came here and read the thread with disbelief that there is no mention of 'The Drought' (orig. title). It's definitely my favourite. Even wrote a song loosely about it! But definitely the short stories tower over the novels in terms of setting up an idea, so many I would love to see as books of their own. Where's the short story poll?

Soon it would be too hot.

High Rise w/Tom Hiddleston and Jeremy Irons, due later this year, directed by Ben Wheatley, fuck!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFNaBa8fbJI

Yes!!

v excited about this. there is a wheatley/jump thread fyi

Ah, apologies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRBeZGYisLg&feature=youtu.be

Looks great very excited.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dPp1PmNc5M nu trailer

Looks great very excited.

what he said

love Wheatley/Jump so much

been making my way through the Complete Short Stories, which is profoundly impressive and has definitely amped up my anticipation for this

so stoked for this i could eat the dog

I'm more than halfway through High-Rise, and it's way too 'on the nose' as the kids say. Sucks, in fact.

the lux tower as microcosm for societal breakdown isn't anywhere as rich as Dawn of the Dead's mall.

Dawn of the Dead is sociology, High-Rise (the novel) is surrealism - they both have their uses

xp the book or the movie?

The book (I don't post about movies in the middle like some millennial beast).

I thought maybe you quit it. Posting half-way through a 200 page book basically same thing (I've done both woo hoo!)

I really doubt JGB is gonna rescue this one in the last 80 pp.

I don't think it'll change your overall impression but there is a little something at the end worth hanging on for.

https://beingfullyhuman.com/2016/10/07/interview-with-j-g-ballard-1997/

that was great. thanks!

Watched the Ben Wheatley film of High-Rise yesterday before it goes off of streaming because of you and thought it was pretty good. Maybe I will finally read the novel.

before it goes off of streaming because of you

Fuck did I do??

Ha, sorry, was just using a classic formulation.

I don't think this ever went in to production? I was looking forward to it!

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-M3Vllqvqw8c/TpeH0zoEXyI/AAAAAAAAABc/oN4iR1XbreY/s1600/Concrete+Island+Teaser+Poster.jpg

Wow, I'd forgotten that was going to be a thing. Announced in 2011!

I'd rank it as a favorite. Weird, brutal, and claustrophobic

yeah, it's a pity it never became a reality, I think it would be a fairly 'filmable' story by Ballard standards

https://clarkeaward.medium.com/the-nonfiction-of-j-g-ballard-an-interview-with-editor-mark-blacklock-83647e69f158

Once it was all gathered, my first instinct was to include everything, but wiser counsel prevailed: it would have been unmanageable.

Boo! I want it all!

Thanks for the bump, ordered the book!

Do I need this? Is that even a question to be asked,

Wonder if teh pinefox knows that guy

I've had beers a few times with the archivists mentioned in there (Rick, David) but not met Mark.

I will definitely get a copy of the book.

I really liked "Super-cannes", it was the one that got me hooked on his writing. I was working 3rd shift as computer operator back in 2001 and the BBC World Service did a reading of that book over a month and from hearing it there led me to check that one out.

I think that book could make a good streaming mini-series. The paranoia in that one would fit in quite well today.

Dipping into the Selected Nonfiction today and having a great time.

Glad Concrete Island only garnered a single vote in the poll. Great premise, horrifically bad execution. It sort of turns into a weird riff on Of Mice and Men